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The International Date Line is even more pernicious an imaginary boundary than the political fences most of us wrap around nation-states. The IDL doesn’t contain fluid bags of population. It doesn’t demarcate tax rates for citizens in states or provinces. The IDL follows the horizon created by the surface of the planet and the void through which the sun’s mostly imperceptible radiation passes. And, it dictates time on earth.

The IDL dictates this cruelest aspect of expat life. With family or friends living in Busan, South Korea, or Sanford, Florida, USA, or a myriad other dots on the globe, I constantly am aware of the continuum of the “now”. My nighttime, by the wonder of geography and geometry, is not yours. And, my New Year’s, when people near me took a moment to reflect on their existences before returning to inebriating themselves and countless other rituals, was not your life-altering opportunity. Would the planet just complete its rotation please! People on both sides of the date line are summing up existence or making life-altering decisions for the future, and I’m about to eat lunch. Lunch was leftovers from 2012..

Not just that. Given that it’s the end of a semester I have trapped myself in the Star Trek universe of motion pictures and reruns, and that means moving back and forth in time. That is, in terms of plot-evading tricks, but also between childhood nostalgia and this gnawing feeling, that the entire franchise will collapse into a wormhole and emerge in another temporal reality someday. I experience the same fear, as if my life is really not run, but is waiting for a better script, one where the author gets the time conversion right. I steer clear of bright flashes of light.

Today, more than most days, I’m having trouble with “progressivity”. It’s not just the entire “moving forward” notion. It’s also the “up and up” notion, the “next day is better than the one that came before” notion, or the “wait and see” notion. There’s also the jarring reality, that many people around the globe have no ritual for January 1, except to watch Americans stare while standing in the freezing cold at shiny balls in the sky. Many people work. Maybe this enervating dearth of actively-reflective ball-watchers is the reason why the sun continues to rise and set 365 days in the void. Reality is relative, but time is a forever tyrant.